THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN: A SIDELINE TO JUDGING

Transcription

1 THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN: A SIDELINE TO JUDGING The Honorable Daniel Wathen & Barbara Riegelhaupt I. INTRODUCTION II. INCREASING UNDERSTANDING OF THE THIRD BRANCH III. PRACTICING LAW IN THE GRAND STYLE IV. TRIBUTES TO OTHERS V. SPEAKING THROUGH FABLE AND FICTION VI. EPILOGUE

2 468 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN: A SIDELINE TO JUDGING The Honorable Daniel Wathen & Barbara Riegelhaupt * I had really developed a sideline to judging, which was secular preaching. I called on readers and listeners to act. I was still, as always, an advocate. Frank M. Coffin 1 I. INTRODUCTION For many years in Maine, the foolproof way to signal the importance of an event or ensure the success of a conference in the legal world was to invite Frank Coffin to deliver the keynote address. If you already had a keynote speaker of national renown, you would invite Judge Coffin to introduce the speaker. His introductions were as highly anticipated as the speech that followed, and they were as likely to entertain and enlighten the audience. The Judge s death at the end of 2009 focused attention on his remarkable contributions to the State of Maine and the nation. Although he served in all three branches of the federal government, his nearly forty-one years of judicial service became his life s work. The appellate opinions he crafted will always be part of the public record. The books he authored will also endure. Indeed, his most recent tome, On Appeal: Courts, Lawyering, and Judging was republished in 2009 in China, translated into Mandarin. 2 The part of his professional life work that is most at risk of slipping gently into that cold night is his collection of speeches. 3 Consistent with his practice of keeping virtually every piece of paper he ever touched, each speech is well documented. His personal effects include files containing copies of the remarks that he delivered during his years on the bench often with research notes along with the beginnings of a catalogue for the speech project that he did not have the chance to pursue. Although the Judge always spoke in public with informality and intimacy, with barely a glance at his script, each speech was meticulously researched and crafted. Many bear evidence of editing right up to the point of delivery. Each speech was custom-made, designed for the occasion, and there was little if any repetition. At some points in his judicial career, primarily after he stepped down from his position as Chief Judge in 1983, he delivered as many as two major addresses a month. The scholarship and craftsmanship involved in these speeches must not be lost. * Daniel Wathen, a former Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, is Of Counsel at Pierce Atwood. Barbara Riegelhaupt served as Judge Coffin s law clerk for twenty-two years and is now a career law clerk for Judge Kermit Lipez, Judge Coffin s colleague on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit FRANK M. COFFIN, LIFE AND TIMES IN THE THREE BRANCHES 208 (2010) [hereinafter MEMOIRS 3]. 2. Id. at In his privately published Memoirs, Judge Coffin noted about his speeches that he had invested so much time, thought, and often passion in putting pen, typewriter, or computer to paper that I do not want to see all these efforts go gently into that cold night. Id. at 207.

3 2011] THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN 469 The Authors of this Article are engaged in a separate project to publish the full collection of law-related speeches delivered by Judge Coffin during his tenure on the bench. That collection in its entirety consists of more than 125 speeches, 4 and it is a treasure trove of thoughts on the judiciary as an institution, the law, judging, the legal profession, legal education, and legal luminaries past and present. The speeches are also worthy of study purely as examples of communication, advocacy, speechcraft, composition, humor, and whimsy. Within the confines of this Article, the modest goal is to provide samples of the delights that await the lawyer, judge, public speaker or citizen who turns to the full collection for guidance and inspiration in pursuing the cause of justice or merely in crafting a memorable speech. Few will ever equal Judge Coffin s ability to shape words to serve a purpose and motivate action. Although each speech was an original, themes did emerge over the course of the Judge s four decades of service in the judiciary. The meaning of a collegial court and the threats to collegiality were topics he explored extensively. Similarly, the need to educate the citizenry and the media, and to engage them in preserving our unique and time-tested legal traditions, was a theme that appeared repeatedly through the years. Also prominent in the files are his rich remarks about practicing law in the grand style, using the law as a tool for social progress. The collection of tributes that he offered in praise or introduction of his colleagues and other luminaries is also a rich mother lode. These tributes reflect his deep interest in the minute details of the lives of others and his ability to turn a small bit of information into a witty oratorical gem. One of his trademark styles was to present his remarks in the form of a fable or as a fictional historical account, often reporting previously overlooked dialogue among familiar figures in history. Although he claimed to have adopted creative writing as a necessary tool to keep the audience s attention, that approach merely augmented his otherwise extraordinary ability to captivate his listeners. In this Article, we dip into the collection of Coffin speeches, offering a sampling of the genius reflected in the full set. In the sections that follow, we present examples of the Judge s efforts in each of the following realms: (1) increasing understanding of the Third Branch among citizens and the media; (2) practicing law in the grand style ; (3) paying tribute to individuals; and (4) speechmaking through fable and historical fiction. One notable omission in our sample is the topic of collegiality, bypassed here because Judge Coffin s role in promoting mutually respectful judging is addressed elsewhere in this issue by one of his colleagues on the First Circuit. 5 We are confident that this taste of Coffin speechcraft will bring back fond memories for those who had the opportunity to hear the words spoken by their creator, and we hope that those who never experienced that pleasure will 4. Judge Coffin reported that, in total, he had made more than 200 speeches during his judicial years. Id. The prepared talks unrelated to the law included remarks at memorial services and other events celebrating happier occasions, homilies at a dozen weddings (primarily for his law clerks), speeches at high school and college commencements, and observations at the reunions of his sixty-eight law clerks. 5. See Levin Campbell, Coffin s Court: A Colleague s View, in this issue of the Maine Law Review.

4 470 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 nonetheless find enjoyment and illumination in reading the words of a judge and an orator who had few equals. II. INCREASING UNDERSTANDING OF THE THIRD BRANCH The two speeches that follow are examples of Judge Coffin s efforts to educate the citizenry in the intricacies of our constitutional form of government and the role of the legal system. He argued that legal reform and modernization required the informed and committed involvement of the public, as well as members of the legal profession. Some might shrink from the task of educating the public, but the Judge was more than equal to the task. Rarely will so much legal learning be found in a luncheon speech to a service club on Law Day or in a sermon delivered in church on the subject of justice. THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND THE COURTS Portland Kiwanis Club April 29, 1975 We have begun our bicentennial. With a deft touch of irony, Fate has ordained that this time of jubilation come on the heels of Watergate, our painful humiliations in Southeast Asia, and our demonstrated inability to maintain our society with prosperity and security for all. Perhaps because this is a time for humility it is also a time to draw strength and pride from our past. It is in the spirit of trying to discover something of our history, both relevant to our times and not likely to be wholly familiar territory to you, that I speak on this Law Day occasion of how the Founding Fathers came to give us the Constitution and how they viewed the role of the third branch of the government they created. For in rediscovering our roots lies much of the understanding of our unique form of government and the secret of its durability. The story starts at least a hundred years before Independence, for we owe much to our Founding Fathers grandfathers. Their own initiation in law and the courts took place in the English tradition, in which the judges held a position unmatched in other European countries, not just because of their professional competence but also because royal grant and ancient usage had peppered every town, borough, manor, and county with courts in which ordinary people participated. The workings of law through the courts were part of an Englishman s life. In the colonies, the settlers in time drew away from the English pattern of three separate court systems King s Bench, Chancery, and Exchequer and invented the model of one system, divided into trial and appellate jurisdiction. Governor Andros, for whom our neighboring county of Androscoggin was named, was a leader in combining all three courts into one superior court. Moreover, the colonists insisted wherever they could on jury trials. Their jury trial syndrome was equaled only by their passion for appeals. The result was that court processes and organization were so familiar to so many colonists that one scholar has said that this familiarity and concern was as large an element in the struggle over the ratification of the Constitution as economics or ideology. More important than their stress on centralized courts, jury trials, and right of

5 2011] THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN 471 appeal was the growth of a distinctly American attitude regarding the function of judges, the expectation that on occasion judges should declare statutes void as being inconsistent with common law, or, as it later was expressed, the constitution. Bear in mind that in the English system whatever Parliament said was supreme. This was also the guiding principle in all of the civil law countries on the continent of Europe. How, then, did the idea of judicial review of the legislative and executive become part of the American set of values? The story begins in the early 1600 s when Edward Coke was practicing, reporting, and later pronouncing law. In several famous cases he had proclaimed the principle that even Parliament could not legislate against the deepest principles of common law. He was not speaking casually. There had been two strains developing in English law. The first was that lands acquired by the King other than by descent were to be treated as if gained by conquest and subject, not to the primary authority of Parliament, but extra regnum, subject only to the King s will. The colonies, of course, were in this grouping. The second development was that the King, in cases where he had given a grant or patent to form a borough or a guild of merchants, would, beginning in the 1200 s, send judges around for what was called the General Eyres. At first they inquired only to see if new laws were within the limitations of the grant. Soon a second principle emerged to inquire if practices were obstructive of common justice. Common justice meant common law and grew into the concept of due process of law. In 1596, an ordinance providing for imprisoning any inhabitant refusing to pay an assessment was held by a court to violate Magna Carta. In 1615, in the Case of the Tailors of Ipswich, a monopolistic ordinance secured from the King by the Merchant Tailors Company was declared to be against the common law. In other words, not even a royal patent could make good a void ordinance. This was bold doctrine, but, in England, confined only to royal grants, a diminishing area. It so happened, however, that the doctrine applied directly to the King s royal provinces his grants which, by 1754, included nine colonies, all but the two proprietary colonies of Maryland and Delaware, and the two corporate colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island. In the nine royal colonies the doctrine took root that the courts could provide a check against powers being exercised beyond the charter or in violation of the common law. So a footnote to the law of England became a cardinal principle in America. The principle was first confined to private matters, such as the law providing for succession of estates, until the mid-1760 s. Up to that time, the relationship of England and the colonies had been loose, allowing room for play in the joints. Walpole coined the phrase salutary neglect to describe the policy. Then, beginning in 1763, Parliament passed statute after statute aimed at the colonies empowering the royal navy to collect customs on every ship, and allowing the citizen informer whose tip led to the arrest to choose the forum with or without jury; the Sugar Act, increasing duties and red tape, and allowing an informer to send the case to trial at Halifax; the Stamp Act, with another informer s choice of forum; the Statute of Foreign Treasons to deal with rioters, the trial to be in England; the Dock Act; and the Administration of Justice Act one of the Intolerable Acts, again with trial not in the neighborhood but in far off England. The legal fights provoked by this legislation moved quickly onto constitutional

6 472 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 ground. The colonists, who were fond of quoting John Locke, patron saint of the Whigs, ironically found their sustenance in the Tory Bolingbroke, who believed in the fixity of the constitution and had written, A Parliament Cannot Annul the Constitution. Strange doctrine this, to Englishmen, but increasingly familiar to Americans. They were not only predisposed to a fixed constitution put in writing but were prepared to commit the power of enforcing conformity to that constitution to the judiciary. What came next were Independence and a decade of living under the Articles of Confederation. The lessons learned during this period were capsuled in the experience we had trying to administer justice in Prize Appeals cases where American privateers or our Continental Navy had captured foreign vessels and claims were submitted to our courts. General Washington first brought the problem to the attention of Congress. Not only was it inappropriate for courts in various colonies to judge cases involving continental vessels, but it was important that justice to other nations some of whom we were interested in attracting to our cause not be at the whim of a parochial jury. Congress attempted to establish a national court of appeal. But the experience was one of frustration, the memory of which was fresh when the Philadelphia Convention was convened. In many other ways, our period of flirtation with the Articles of Confederation was a nursery for the national conscience. Debts due British creditors, no matter how just, were resisted. Requisitions of funds by Congress were cavalierly avoided. Widespread absenteeism by representatives to Congress was the rule. Finally, in 1786, things began to move again. A group of states, worried about trade and the economy, met at Annapolis. They asked Congress to call a convention. After a few months of being unable to form a quorum, Congress issued a call for a convention to revise the Articles, but, wittingly or not, inserted in the preamble the words which were to prove fateful that the proposed convention was the most probable means of establishing in these states a firm national government. This broad preamble, by long established rules of construction going back to the early 1600 s, overrode the language that the Convention was to be for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. The Convention met on May 14 and got down to work on May 30, Three and one half months later it had completed the most remarkable and enduring large work of social organization ever struck off by any group of human beings. There are several things to note about this group. It was, even from our perspective, incredibly young. Franklin s advanced age of 81 was required to raise the average age to 43. The key men were James Madison, 36, and Alexander Hamilton, only 30. John Adams, temporarily removed from the scene as an ambassador but only physically was 37. While two thirds of the 36 were forgettable men, a dozen were outstanding in the breadth of their vision and in their parliamentary ability. They began. Though this may seem a technical point, it is worth noting that they were inspired to adopt a procedure whereby points relevant to any article could be reconsidered later. Certain issues were gnawed over, like a bone, again and again. But sometimes in the gnawing an issue which had seemed portentous suddenly dropped from sight. In any event, under this rule, they knew that no one vote would be crucial and final. This, I think, set the stage for true deliberation,

7 2011] THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN 473 which allows room for second thoughts. The major issue, underlying most of the debate, was the allocation of powers between states and the national government and within the national government. Our story, the birth of the judicial section, is a chapter in that tale, but an important one. Randolph of Virginia had submitted a Virginia Plan, which proved to be the model worked on by the Convention. The debate was strongest on such issues as the appointment, tenure, and salary of the federal judiciary. Significantly, there was little dispute with the idea that judges should hold office during good behavior. The memory of the King s removal of stubborn judges was too fresh in the minds of the members. As to salary, Madison argued that it should be fixed, subject to neither decrease nor increase. Franklin, always a realist, pointed out that there was such a thing as inflation. The suggestion was made that judges salaries be tied to the purchasing power of so many bushels of wheat. In the end the Congress voted that judicial salaries could not be reduced. The independence of the judiciary came to the fore again when the proposal was considered to involve the Supreme Court with the Executive in an advance screening and possible veto of Acts of Congress. This was finally turned down, probably because of the feeling that judges should pass on legislation only when actual controversies were presented to them and that the judiciary should be shielded from any temptation to engage in anything approaching political bargaining. While Randolph s original proposal envisaged one or more supreme courts, the Congress quickly settled on one. More difficult was his proposal to allow Congress to establish other, inferior federal courts. During much of the Convention the hope was held by some that state courts could fulfill this function. But the memory of the Prize Appeals experience finally won out and Congress was not only permitted but encouraged to set up these courts. At one point the federal courts were given authority to decide anything which might forward the peace and harmony of the nation. Had this provision stayed in, I as a federal judge might be presiding over the domestic difficulties of your next-door neighbor. As the Constitutional Convention came into its final week, some good and bad ideas came to the forefront. In the latter category was the proposal that the Chief Justice look over new legislation to see if it comported with good morals. This was, happily, rejected. Of much greater importance was the final wording of the Supremacy Clause, which, after proclaiming that the Constitution and laws pursuant to it, and treaties were to be the supreme law of the several states, singled out the judges to be bound thereby. This command pointed clearly at the role of the nation s judges as the arbiters of constitutionality. Thus came to fruition what colonists had come to value in their century long relationship with their mother country. History has generally credited John Marshall with inventing the doctrine of judicial review of acts of Congress in Marbury v. Madison. From what we have seen it is closer to the truth to say that Marshall made explicit what was implicit in the Constitution and clear in the minds of the Founders. Thus the Convention ended. This had been in the main a meeting on the high ground of rational debate. It also had been a meeting focused on structure: the delineation of powers given to the national government, and the checks and balances effective within that government. Individual rights and liberties were not discussed. This is understandable, for what was at issue was what powers were to

8 474 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 be given the national government; if nothing about religion, speech, the press, selfincrimination was given to that government, so the argument went, there was no reason to worry about their infringement. Nevertheless, a strong liberty nerve throbbed. People remembered too well not only what had happened in Star Chamber trials in England but what had happened in the colonies under the infamous Writs of Assistance. This liberty nerve remained to be played on by the many who opposed creating a new nation. The ten months debate on ratification was one of the most intensive exposures to all kinds of propaganda that any nation has been exposed to. The newspapers were the medium and the mode was largely vulgar. The various appeals, apart from the remarkable Federalist Papers, were bottomed on prejudice: religious, sectional, fear of a standing army, and distaste of an imagined aristocracy. The various state conventions were not models of eloquence or rationality. Our own convention in Massachusetts was a fair example. We Mainers, comprising about two sevenths of the delegates, were disposed favorably toward the Constitution, feeling that perhaps in this direction lay the best hope for our own independence. History has not been kind to our delegates. One has been characterized by a fellow Mainer as windy ; one had to have his speeches ghost written; and another was elected on a platform that if he were elected a delegate he would not attend. But history has been less kind to the two most prominent men in that convention. Sam Adams, who had been most critical of the new constitution, was converted to its support when his claque of Boston artisans and tradesmen lobbied by Constitution proponents came out in favor of it. John Hancock, a vain man, was swung over by the new convert, Sam Adams, and the illusory promise that he would be next in line for the Presidency after Washington. In other states newspapers carrying the latest news were misdirected, crucial letters of support were withheld, quorums were obtained by sending marshals to all the bars and key votes were lost by staying over-long at well planned alcoholic lunches. Chicanery was on occasion a willing man-servant to principle. The outcome was not all that conclusive. The vote in Massachusetts was 187 for ratification, 168 against; in New Hampshire, 57-47; Virginia, 89-79; New York, Rhode Island flatly turned it down. This was far from a groundswell. But it was enough. A nation came into being. Its work was not over. The First Congress convened with general expectations that a bill of rights would be made part of the Constitution. Several states had even contemplated making this a condition of ratification. The hero in this hour was Madison. He had originally not thought a bill of rights necessary. But, methodical man that he was, he sifted through no fewer than 186 proposed amendments, found 80 substantive ones, cast out the least popular and practicable, and came up with a list of nineteen. With this mammoth job done the House and Senate finally agreed on the ten which joined our Constitution in To this we must add the Fourteenth Amendment, passed at the close of the Civil War, guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens. What does all this add up to? It is a concept of government that starts from the proposition that the people are the ultimate arbiter. This was not a unique concept. Witness ancient Greece. But the Founding Fathers and the Americans they represented did not create a pure democracy. They had an abiding distrust of

9 2011] THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN 475 government that is to say the people riding roughshod over individual rights. Hence the Bill of Rights. They developed their own home grown doctrine of separation of powers, making room for both state and nation. They carried their distrust not only to giving a president the power to veto an act of Congress and Congress the power to override a veto, but gave the House the power to initiate tax legislation and the Senate the power to approve Treaties and top appointments. All told, this added up to an intricate balancing act. Moreover, they watered down a citizen s franchise in several ways. While they created a House where representation reflected population, they created a Senate where a state, no matter how large or small, had two Senators. These Senators were not only picked by state legislators but, being elected for six year terms, were further removed from changes in popular will. And the Presidency was filled by the votes of state electors, the winner not necessarily being the person with the greatest popular vote. Finally, from the beginning they insisted on the appointment of judges who should have permanent tenure and be shielded from legislative or executive pressure. What was created is a mixed government one in which power is so diffused that no person, faction, class, group, or segment of the population, no matter what its numbers, could ever gain control of all the parts of the multi-faceted government. If one tried to chart our federal-state system, identifying sources of power, there would be so many vertical and horizontal lines criss-crossing the page that it would look like a cat s cradle. While the Founding Fathers probably never expressed it this way, in constructing such a government they were rejecting Montesquieu s teaching that the operating principle of a republic was virtue. For this was a government based on the recognition that man, unchecked, could and would be self seeking, in short, evil. It therefore sought to insure that bribery, chicanery, deals, greed, logrolling, and love of power, prestige and self would over the long haul not overcome the public good by reason of the built-in motives and mechanisms to watch over, to warn, to oppose, and to check. Such a system had to be in writing. Indeed, insistence on a written constitution, unlike that of England, was evident from the start. For the Fathers knew that Magna Carta had been enacted by Parliament thirty-two times which meant that it had fallen out of the constitution at least thirty-one times. But putting the system on paper did not mean that all boundaries were located with detailed precision. Power was only generally defined, allowing it to shift as time and circumstances should dictate. But, if commodious words like interstate commerce, due process, and equal protection were to have any meaning, and if definitions were not set forth in the Constitution, how were limits to be set? Here the Founding Fathers, with a century of history behind them, made another peculiarly American contribution. Revolutionists and believers in the sovereignty of the people as they were, they nevertheless pointed to their judges, the least democratic branch, to insure that in fact the Constitution should be the supreme law of the land. And, while the Founders did all they could to make the federal judiciary independent, it is still subject to a series of substantial checks. Attrition among old judges, the appointment of new judges by elected officials, appellate and Supreme Court review of decisions, legislative responses to judicial interpretation, academic commentary on judicial reasoning, and the impact of events on

10 476 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 sitting judges all can combine to work ponderous changes in the flow of judicial thought. This system a mixture of systems has survived. It has proven workable, adaptable, and enduring through wars, civil and foreign, and revolutionary change, economic, technological, and social. The machinery seldom runs perfectly. The executive branch can be for a time dominated and exploited, or simply sluggish and unresponsive. The Congress can be paralyzed by its own establishment and complexity of the tasks it undertakes. The judiciary can be criticized for being too liberal and too conservative, too passive or too active. The federal government can be for a time too intrusive into the affairs of states, and states at times can be in defiance of federal laws. And every part of this machinery can stand better people, better methods, better ideas. But when all this is said, the American Revolution, because of what it produced, our Constitution, nourishes our pride in the past two centuries and our hope for those to come. JUSTICE AS A COILED SPRING A sermon delivered at Immanuel Baptist Church, Portland, Maine January 22, 1978 To be asked to speak from this pulpit as part of the half century celebration of this church is, for a layman, an honor. And to be asked by one s own minister, particularly when that minister is Edward Nelson, is an honor one cannot refuse. But to try to say something fresh or inspiring to you on the subject of Justice in a few minutes is a very ambitious undertaking. For just as love is the very heart of the Christian religion, so is justice the very core of western society. The Bible did not readily suggest a theme. The Old Testament, of course, is strong for justice; but it deals with concepts of a just God and a just person. It says very little about how society should go about providing secular justice for all. It was natural for me to turn to the Book of Judges. This, however, is a rather bloody account of the Israelites from about 1120 B.C. to 1050 A.D., at a time when they had no king but were ruled for some 200 years by ten leaders who were called judges and rescued the people time and time again from marauding bands. The only judicial-type judge, interestingly enough, was a woman, Deborah. As the book relates, It was her custom to sit beneath the Palm-tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill-country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her for justice. (4:5). Not being in the business of rescuing from marauding bands and not having my own palm tree to sit under, I must look elsewhere. In the New Testament, at least in a quick survey, I found only one instance where Jesus uses the word justice ; it is when he is giving the lawyers and Pharisees a good dressing down and says, Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin; but you have overlooked the weightier demands of the Law, justice, mercy, and good faith. It is these you should have practiced, without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain off a midge, yet gulp down a camel! (23:23-4). So justice is a good, but we are not told what it is. As we shall later see, I draw more from some of his parables than when he talks in these very broad terms.

11 2011] THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN 477 So the soundest and humblest approach for a theme in this house is for me as one parishioner to tell his fellow parishioners some things he thinks are important for them to know about his work. Recently, when we were in the company of a minister in another town, he asked me whether the people of my church supported me in my ministry. This was a new thought to me... that I had a ministry, that you should know about it, and that I should care for your understanding and support. Yet is it not part of our concept of ourselves and church that not merely Dr. Nelson and Ruth Morrison have a ministry to attend to, but all of us? In my case there is another reason to tell you some things of my work. It is that this work cannot succeed without understanding, commitment, and even sacrifice on the part of citizens in general. When we speak of justice in the large, we are speaking of the way our society works in distributing to the able opportunities to learn, work, and live in comfort, and to those less able the opportunities, goods, and services which add up to security. And of course on you and your elected representatives and officials, city, state, and national, this kind of justice must depend. But you have a vital role even when we talk about the kind of justice that centers about the courts. Wholly apart from the funding and support you give the institutions of society, I have the profound conviction that in the long run the quality of the stewards of the justice system police, prosecutors, wardens, judges will respond to the strongly felt expectations of the people. On their discriminating and knowledgeable praise and censure do the development of better role models and public institutions depend. The recent use by the President, Senators, and Governors of committees to propose names of qualified judgeship candidates seems to me to reflect such expectations. In the time we have today, I want to do three things: to sharpen your perceptions of the kinds of justice dispensed in the different levels of our court systems and the different qualities demanded from the judges of these courts; to observe how the area of freedom to decide changes as we go from trial to appellate courts; and, finally, to see how in that area of freedom is a tension which comes from the Constitution itself. If we achieve this much, it will be a big step beyond the assumptions of many people, that justice is merely a mechanical matching of a given set of facts to the right law or rule. To begin with, Americans have a fuzzy idea of their courts and judges. People say to me, I hope I don t have to appear before you, or, Now I know where to go if I get a parking ticket. These people have placed me at the wrong level in the wrong court system. All we need to know right now is that there are two systems, one for each state to deal with questions of state law, and one for the nation, to deal with questions of federal law. Each state has a district or municipal or police court through which those accused of speeding, assault, or petty thievery flow in a large, rapid, and never-ending stream. This in a real sense is the people s court, where justice is defined for most people. Here is where we need judges who are compassionate, whose knowledge of human nature is deep, and who have an uncommon share of common sense. These qualities, more than mere learning in the law, are the relevant ones, for these judges come closest to Deborah sitting under her palm tree; their decisions, often made on a moment s deliberation dozens of times a day, are at their best not rough but finely tailored justice fitting the individual like a hand-crafted suit.

12 478 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 The higher up the ladder of courts we climb, the more room is taken by the rules of law, and the less remains for a judge s personal sense of justice. There s an old story about Judge Learned Hand bidding farewell to Mr. Justice Holmes and saying, Do justice. Holmes called him back and said, That s not our job. Our job is to apply the law. While, like any other memorable quip, this is only partly true, the truth bears repeating for those who would judge judges fairly. A state or federal trial judge may throw out an indictment. He is labeled soft on criminals. Or an elderly pedestrian is cruelly injured by an automobile and the judge does not let the case go to the jury. He (or she) is thought to be hard-hearted and defense minded. In both cases the judge, wishing he could punish the criminal defendant and reward the injured oldster, is acting as the law compels him to act. Yet if the trial judge is often straitjacketed by the law, he still has more freedom in some important ways than the courts of appeals. He has a wide discretion to sentence convicted criminals, to make findings of fact, to stimulate compromises, and to frame remedies. These judges must have a wide knowledge of law sufficient to make fair decisions on the spot; they must be calming and dignified managers of a trial; and they must have a sense of the practical, an ability to handle people, patience, courage, and decisiveness. The appellate courts in the two systems are the Supreme Court of each state and eleven federal courts of appeals, of which my court is one... and of course the United States Supreme Court, which reviews a very small number of both state and federal cases. We do not see the parties, juries, or witnesses. We miss out on the drama. By the time we get a case, all suspense is over. We deal only with the cold, printed record, and the lawyers arguments in their written briefs. Although so called, they often run from seventy to one hundred pages long. Unlike the trial courts, appellate judges work in panels of three or more. And unlike decisions at trial, decisions on appeal are not made on the spot, but only slowly, over time, after briefs are read, arguments heard, the case discussed among the judges, the opinion researched and written by one judge in consultation with his law clerks, and, finally, the draft opinion circulated for reaction to the other judges. This incremental, collegial process of decision resulting in an opinion which must be put in writing is one of the best guarantees against arbitrariness which man has devised. Now the appellate judge is quite a different animal from the trial judge. What he needs is the ability to suspend judgment as he ploughs through thick records, to work well with colleagues, to give and take suggestions, to listen, to take the long view, to see a decision in the light of where the law has been and where it is likely to go, and to express complex thoughts clearly through the written word. It also helps if he has a philosophical bent and can adapt to a cloistered life. While I have said that appellate courts have less freedom in some ways than trial courts, they do have a freedom on occasion to make law. Indeed, in one sense, whenever an appellate court decides a case, it is making law even if it is deciding only that a portable cement mixer is a motor vehicle when it takes to the highway. Before the decision, one could argue either way, but not after. This kind of freedom to make law is as old as the English common law itself, more than half a millennium. Nine-tenths of the cases decided by a state or federal appellate court, other than the Supreme Court, are of this kind. This is what scholars would call

13 2011] THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN 479 interstitial or gap-filling law making, adding something the legislature would have added had it given thought to all possible applications of a law. The remarkable thing is that in this overwhelming majority of cases, even though good lawyers make a strong case for both sides, and trial judges may decide both ways, the appellate judges, despite different backgrounds in practice, experience, and politics, will, after their drawn-out, collegial process of decision making, agree. They will do so because, after they take into account the hard facts in the record, the applicable statute and its legislative history, the relevant case law, and logical reasoning, there is virtually no room for reasonable judges to disagree. I refer not to such cases but to the true area of freedom, where it is possible for reasonable judges to disagree. This is small, if it exists at all, when the law is static and individual rights are narrowly defined and rigidly confined. Through the nineteenth century and the early part of this century, judges decided cases in the field of private law contracts, torts, property pretty much as did their ancestors on the bench. But look what has happened in the past forty years: the administrative agency and law development of the 30 s and 40 s; the school desegregation cases of the 50 s; the civil liberties expansion of the 50 s and 60 s; the range of civil rights litigation of the 60 s; and the sweep of over forty major federal statutes in the 70 s thrusting the courts deeply into issues concerning the environment, energy, health, safety, information, consumer protection, and age and sex discrimination. This has been a justice revolution unequalled in our country or anywhere else at any time in history. The result is that courts have found themselves deeply involved in public law issues, issues which, because new or undefined, permitted broad options of decision. Each new statute affecting welfare, housing, safety, or environment carries with it a hunting license for a decade before all open questions of interpretation are settled. The deeper source of freedom is found in the less precise clauses of the Constitution. Due process and equal protection of the laws, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, are the principal examples. Under the spur of civil rights lawsuits based on these words, courts have for almost a decade found themselves called upon to monitor public institutions to see that they act fairly toward, and without discrimination among, individuals. Jails, hospitals, mental institutions, universities, school systems, welfare programs, housing projects... all these have felt the impact of court orders. At this point people wake up and say, Where do courts get the power to do this kind of thing? I thought we were a democracy. Yet these judges who aren t elected or responsible to anyone are running our schools, prisons, elections, and just about everything. With this question this generation must wrestle anew as does every generation with the basic constitution-building problem faced by the Founding Fathers as they sought to create a structure that would serve the values they held dear. While their dominant goal was to create a government of, by, and for the people, they avoided the over simple device of providing for an absolute, Greekstyle democracy. They wrought a representative democracy, with the Senate being considerably less democratic than the House, and the President through his veto being given the power to nullify legislation desired by a clear majority. And while laws are passed, taxes raised, and monies spent in accordance with the majoritarian

14 480 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 principle, the Constitution also, through its Bill of Rights, recognizes rights in individuals to speak, to assemble, to worship, to due process and equal protection. It is in effect saying, while we run ourselves by majority vote, there are some things that not even an overwhelming or unanimous majority can do. If Congress unanimously passed, and the President signed, a law barring Edward Nelson from this pulpit, no one would contend that this law would be worth the paper it was written on. More realistically, it is entirely conceivable that legislators of a state would balance their budget by drastically cutting appropriations for the state prison, necessitating housing two or three prisoners in each tiny bathroom-sized cell. In both cases, the single, non-elected, life-tenured judge would declare the action of the majority void, not because this is democratic but because ours is a democracy wedded to certain individual rights. This is not a formula of repose. Nor is it a formula of simplicity as it would be if, like continental countries, we were willing to make the parliament supreme in everything. It is a formula calculated to create tension. This is why, in thinking about our Constitution, I do not see justice as accurately represented by such a static, inert symbol as a set of scales. I think the appropriate metaphor is a coiled spring whose tension limits the pressures of a majoritarian government on one side and the demands on behalf of individual rights on the other. This dual purpose Constitution owes much to the ages. The idea of democracy comes from Periclean Greece. To Rome we owe the majestic idea of the rule of law. But somehow into the crucible was poured also the sense of worth of an individual that we find in the New Testament. The scriptural passage about the one lost sheep from the ninety-nine comes just before the parable, in Luke, of the prodigal son, a young man who many might say was not worth worrying about. Our law books are full of cases of such individuals; occasionally they prove worth worrying about, and in any event, we worry about them because tomorrow we might stand in their shoes. It is now pretty well accepted by most Americans that in this kind of mixed government, it is entirely fitting, as Chief Justice John Marshall announced in Marbury v. Madison, that judges and not the majority determine when the majority has exceeded its powers or rightful exercise of its duties. But this still leaves plenty of tension. Some feel that the individual rights should be confined to precisely what they were understood to mean in 1789, when the Constitution was ratified, or in 1866, when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. This argument suggested our second scriptural passage, being reminiscent of the Pharisee s chiding Jesus for allowing his disciples to pluck ears of corn in the cornfield on the Sabbath. Jesus, acting like a latter day Supreme Court Justice, hesitated not in telling his inquisitors, If you had known what that text means, I require mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. If judges and particularly the Supreme Court could not similarly interpret for their times the meaning of old phrases, the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches of one s person, papers, or house, could not be interpreted as covering wiretapping, since the Founding Fathers could not have had in mind this kind of intrusion. Yet to the extent that a freedom to interpret is accorded to judges, there will be unanswerable questions as to the source and extent of their reading. There will be running debate over judges views of society, their weighting of

15 2011] THE SPEECHES OF FRANK M. COFFIN 481 values of the individual as posed against those of society, their conclusion that individual rights were violated, and, particularly, their framing of a remedy if this involves not merely the abolition of the chain gang, or the third degree, but a long range plan for the restructuring of a prison or school system. I see no simple way to avoid this kind of tension in a society which values both majority rule and individual rights. Appellate courts and the Supreme Court exist to check rash or irresponsible judges. But when judges seem intrusive, it is often only because lawmakers or executive officials have neglected or refused for too long a time to take action clearly indicated to reach constitutional standards. To the extent that citizens persuade their elected leaders to cure obvious problems, they lessen the likelihood of confrontation. While our government has been durable, I think it is also fragile. What I may mistake for fragility may be the resiliency and flexibility of the willow which withstands all winds. But I think it wise not to push even the willow to its limits. When all is said and done, just as love is the ineffable mystery in our religious life, so the workings of justice remain something of a mystery in our secular life. But something all the more to cherish and nourish. III. PRACTICING LAW IN THE GRAND STYLE Throughout his career, Judge Coffin would speak formally and in casual conversation of practicing law in the Grand Style. When he entered Harvard Law School in the fall of 1940, he made the following entry in his journal: I am to study law with the intention of using it as a tool for social progress. 6 Although he practiced law for less than a decade before he was called to pursue social progress in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the federal government, 7 he continued to hold forth a picture of legal practice that summonsed the legal profession to return to its roots. A glimpse of the history of the Grand Style and the beginnings of the present-day challenges are evident in a 1983 speech to the bar in his home county. In 1996, he refreshed his views and presented examples of the Grand Style of practice in a modern context to a then current crop of legal graduates. Together, these speeches sketch out the contours of the type of legal practice that he persistently advocated. THE ANDROSCOGGIN BAR PAST AND FUTURE Address to the Bar of Androscoggin County, Martindale Country Club May 23, 1983 Only one who has moved away from his home community can appreciate what place it holds in the expatriate s heart. In my case all of my growing up was done 6. 1 FRANK M. COFFIN, LIFE AND TIMES IN THE THREE BRANCHES 127 (2004). 7. Judge Coffin began the practice of law in 1947 with small matters that he took on during his two-year clerkship with United States District Court Judge John D. Clifford (a dual role that no longer is permitted). See 2 FRANK M. COFFIN, LIFE AND TIMES IN THE THREE BRANCHES 240 (2010). He worked as a full-time solo practitioner in Lewiston from1949 to mid-1952, when he began working three days a week at Verrill Dana in Portland. Id. at 268, 274. In the fall of 1956, he was elected to Congress. Id. at 378.

16 482 MAINE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:2 here, all of my undergraduate schooling, my baptism in the law, virtually all of my community service, and all of the building of my political life. In a sense, just like philosophers after Plato, every other place I have lived and worked has merely supplied the footnotes. To this bar, which I joined thirty-six years ago this summer, I should make the confession of any returning long-absent native son: the Androscoggin Bar is forever as fixed in my mind as would be a group photograph taken at a particular time. In the center of the front row is pipe-smoking Supreme Court Justice Harry Manser who admitted me to your company. Next are Frank Linnell and Don Webber who, as elders at the bar although only in their early 40 s, encouraged me to start my practice here, since there was a lack of young lawyers. On the other side of the Justice are the Cliffords, John D., Jr., who asked me to clerk for him, and taught me that so much more than scholarship went into the making of a lawyer and judge, and his brother Bill, whose massive bulk and bulldog face radiated the simple integrity of the man. Then the fabled Bermans, Ben the consummate trial lawyer and David the constant student a combination very much like my grandfather, Frank A. Morey, and his more oratorical partner, Daniel J. McGillicuddy. The analytical, tactical, and courtroom powers of these lawyers were first rate. I usually compare the best advocates who appear before my court rather unfavorably to the top products, of which there were more than a few, of the Androscoggin bar. All, without exception, were unfailingly generous in helping me avoid mistakes, even more appreciated, helping me correct mistakes, and helping me do better next time. But once in court one did not ask for favors. In my early days the moisture behind my ears rather rapidly disappeared after encounters with or against these titans and Foxy Frank Powers, the resourceful and durable John Marshall, the indefatigable John Platz. The model of wise, long headed counsellors was provided by such sages as W. B. Skelton and Peter Isaacson... and quintessential sense and good humor by such as Blackie Alpren and the apparently immortal Harold Redding. Free advice and help always were to be cheerfully obtained from our judges municipal, probate, superior, supreme from Adrian Cote, Fern Despins, and Harris Isaacson, to Don Webber. I must always put in a special niche my first office sharer, mentor, and support, one of our first and valiant women members of this bar, Marguerite L. O Roak. Some of those I ve mentioned happily still survive and thrive. To a remarkable extent there is a second and even a third generation of many. Bermans, Cliffords, Delahantys, Cotes, Linnells, Webbers, Isaacsons, Skeltons, and Traftons continue to flourish. And there is a lively if dwindling coterie of my contemporaries in the second row of this photograph Justices Dufresne and Delahanty, Scolnik and Scales, Eddie Beauchamp, Irving and Philip Isaacson, Bill Trafton, Irving Friedman, and such youngsters as Curtis Webber, Paul Cote, and Larry Raymond. Others, both living and dead, I have not intentionally omitted but only because the constraints of time force me to draw only an impressionistic sketch. But that impression is of a bar of highly competent and dedicated professionals, respecting their colleagues and the court, superbly serving their clients, both rich and poor, giving much to their community, and in general having the time of their life every